Windows 8 Windows 8 Beta Testing.

davehc

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This is obvious to many, but for the benefit of all. The Beta is imminent. May I suggest to everyone who intends to put it through its paces, that you get hold of an image program Acronis if you want to pay, but there are others, I have read good reports of Macrium. Make an image now of you present installation(s). If all goes wrong, particualrly during the early installation and customising of windows 8, it takes 10 minutes or so to replace your previous setup in its entirety. For better or worse, it will also save you and helpers, a great deal of time on the forums trying to put it all back together!
 
I use Acronis and it only takes about 10 min to load an image. It's also important to make and test the bootable rescue disk that most of this software uses. I also boot from that disk to make the image. That way nothing is running or auto updating to cause a problem.
On a different note everybody may not want to or be able to partition their drive. With Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate you can create a bootable virtual hard disk. Simply it's a folder that is treated like a partition. Then you are you are using your real hardware. When you're done you simply delete it. I tried it on the preview they released and it worked fine.
Joe
 
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Good alternative suggestion, Joe.
It probably comes down to personal preference. I have, as do most, possibly, a couple of partitions which are, in some cases, reformatted from time to time. An extra Hard disk is also a useful addition.
I prefer, for testing, to run new OS releases in a dual boot environment. Right or wrong thinking, I feel it gives a more realistic useage in terms of speed, etc.
 
That's another advantage of the virtual hard disk it is dual boot. Some people have problems with partitions because some makers like Dell have already used all of the primary partitions allowed for their junk. I think you are only allowed 4 primary if I remember right. You get the system, system reserved, restore, and then their junk all marked primary. From the posts I've seen Dell is or was a major offender with this.
Joe
 
LOL. I'll keep my head down on that one, Joe. My son is an onsite repair man for DEll!
 
All my present Images include Win 7 Ultimate and Win 8 DP. I have Acronis TIH 2011 installed in Win 7. I can make these Images from within Win 7 or from booting to the Acronis Rescue Media. Either way I did not have to install Acronis in Win 8 DP, although I could have.

This dual Image does not take up much space on my Ext USB HD. To restore the Images, I have to restore them one partition at a time, either Win 7 or Win 8 DP. I suspect this will continue when MS releases Win 8 CR (the rumor is that MS will call the beta the Consumer Review)
 
I've been using Ghost 11.5 (dos boot version) to back up my Win-8 install since day one.
It's how I've been backing up my hard drives since 1997, when it first came to the US. (from New Zealand)

It runs exactly the same, to back up Win-8 as it did on all the previous versions of Windows. No problemo!

It's fast, effective, user friendly, and 100% reliable, if properly used, and you can store as many images as you
like on a storage drive of adequate size. I usually go for about six images, before I start deleting the old ones.

Cheers Mates!
:cool:
 
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